


The Broken and the Lost

by emeralddarkness



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, HateShip, I mean I say pairing but it's an odd pairing, M/M, by which I mean nonexistant pair tbh, rarepair, this pairing is the worst pairing and also somehow my otp, two broken elves are broken together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9580481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: What if it wasn't Oropher who'd died in the charge during the Last Alliance? What if Thranduil had instead?





	

He had become a tree full of dead leaves.

Oropher’s breath rattled in his chest as he drew it in; he almost felt as though he would blow away in dust when he exhaled, that everything left of him would break off in pieces and be carried over the mountains by the wind. In the west the sunset had once again made the sky the color of straw and of death. He watched it and wondered as he did if it was fitting that he should be so _tired_.

Elves did not normally grow very tired unless very young, for when older they could find rest in song and laughter and beautiful things that they carried in their hearts, but this wasn’t even exhaustion as children knew it. At least they could sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes the only thing waiting for him was a tangle of bloodless limbs and faces, and all that was left in his hollowed out heart was a corpse with hair that had once been golden, but which had been turned black by the blood-soaked ground he lay on. There was no rest that could be found in either.

There were days when the thought that the battlefield, or what remained of it, was hundreds of miles behind him seemed ludicrous. Days when despite all logic he expected to look up and see the Black Gates climbing high above him, expected the ground under his feet to soften into land made marshy by gore and the shredded remains of viscera, expected to hear the flies as they buzzed around carcasses which were already beginning to rot before landing on their blood-soaked, shredded armor and their milky, accusatory eyes. It hardly mattered that the decay had not set so firmly in by the time that he’d taken his son’s body and left both the battlefield and his kingship. Maybe that was his curse, to see forever what had become of the people he had brought to the slaughter.

* * *

It was hot in the sun, and it was cool under the moon, and time rushed past like running water. The days blurred together into a washed-out illusion, tinged gray around the edges with weariness and the wearying _sameness_ of it all. Somehow no matter how he traveled nothing ever changed; he could hardly remember why he kept moving at all until he stopped and was reminded. He was running from ghosts, his eyes and mouth and nose were full of them. Every time he lingered it wasn’t long before he felt like he was drowning, and so on he would run once again.

A cavern on a mountain with stalactites hanging near the entrance like fangs lining a maw.

A perfect circle of tall stones filled with grass as green as emeralds and little stars of niphredil.

A willow on the banks of a little flat-bottomed river with branches so long they brushed the water.

A beach made of pebbles that were all the different colors of the sea, from all the grays and whites and blues and greens to the delicate lilac and rose and gold that the crests of the waves shone at sunrise.

He did not have a destination – there was nowhere left for him to go – but somehow his footsteps always led him ever further west, to the shores of the sea. The Undying Lands were beyond them, and the Halls of Mandos, if all he had been told might be believed. He wondered if all of the people he had failed were waiting for him there. When he finally found himself at the seashore he looked over the glass green waves crowned with ribbons of seafoam, and the gulls on the wind sounded like the screams of the dying.

The music of the waves was so full of heartache and promise that Oropher almost wanted to step out into the sea and see where it would carry him. But he was so tired, and the entire world was dull and fettered and what was the _point_?

“What are you doing here?”

The voice was musical even when startled. Oropher jerked in surprise at the sound before twisting around to find its source. He hadn’t known anyone else was there, but of course it was difficult to hear an elf, even moving over such rough footing as this.

The other elf was more elegant than he had a right to be as he stood there in the sea breeze, wrapped in the salt-stained remnants of what had once been a well-made cloak. His dark, wind-snarled hair, damp from the sea spray, hung limply around his shoulders, and his eyes seemed to have been swallowed by purple shadows. At the sight of him Oropher was left off-balance for an awful moment, trying to reconcile the sudden sight of someone who looked almost as tired as he felt and the identity of the speaker.

“You,” he said, and was so startled that for a moment his voice held none of the venom that should have coated it. The word hung in the air like a raindrop, falling through the silence to be swallowed by the ground. Slowly Oropher’s broken heart caught up to the rest of him. “ _You_ ,” he said again, and almost to his surprise a spark of hate flared in the wasteland in apathy that he had become. “I might have known.” The words felt like they were all sharp edges and would cut his tongue as he spoke them.

Maglor stayed perfectly still, all except for his eyes. Those caught the light of the setting sun as they flicked up and down over the form of the other elf and flared like embers. “You might have.” His tone was remarkably neutral, and faded into the boom and rush of the surf. Oropher found that he hated him even more for that.

The press of words rising in his throat and chest felt as though they might strangle him. It was a remarkably strange feeling, when feeling much of anything had become a novel sensation. “It’s _your_ fault,” he hissed when he could find his breath again, “yours and your _family’s_ , you killed them, you’re the reason they’re dead, it should have been you-”

In his mind was Aeariel’s snow-white skin with the red of her blood lurid against it and shining dark in the lights of the fires creeping up the trees – but closer yet was the memory of Thranduil’s empty eyes, and the impossible way that he had looked so very _young_. Thranduil wasn’t young, he hadn’t been since the fall of Doriath, no more than had any who survived it. He’d been forced to grow up fast by the Kinslayings, the wars and battles and killings, but in death he had still looked so young. And it was his fault, he had brought this to his child, to the only piece of family he had left to him after his parents and his wife and his younger sisters had been reaped at the slaughter brought by the sons of Fëanor.

Hate was as good a distraction as any, and he clung to it in a way that might have been desperate if he had room left for any other emotion. It swelled within his chest, hate and sorrow and viciousness to accompany them. Maglor’s expression because gently sorrowful as he watched, his eyes full of pity as he looked at Oropher, and Oropher only hated him more.

“Something happened.”

“Everything you and your family began.” Maglor’s expression twisted, sharp as a knife, but he didn’t move beyond that, or answer the accusation. Oropher snarled. He stepped forward and shoved Maglor hard enough that he stumbled, pressing him back against a twisted, weather-worn pine, drawing the little knife from his belt as he did. Maglor had started when Oropher had moved, taken a step back before he was shoved, and had tried to push back away again when he was, but he stopped struggling, or even moving, as Oropher pressed the point of the knife down over his heart.

Oropher could feel the little blade resting against the worn fabric of Maglor’s tunic, shifting slightly with his breath; it was not so sharp that it would cut through and pierce flesh without pressure behind it. Maglor closed his eyes briefly, as though resigning himself. When he opened his eyes again they weren’t anything but tired, and that almost made Oropher snarl again.

“It won’t be payment for everything you’ve stolen, but I _can_ take some measure of justice for the lives lost under your hands.”

Maglor stood very still, with the point of the knife against his breast, and wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to feel at that, though it seemed there should be something. “Do it, then,” he said finally, “if it will bring you some measure of peace.” His voice gained an edge of brittle humor as he continued a moment later. “It is not as though I have so much to live for.”

Oropher pressed down harder, the look in his eyes as sharp and broken as shattered glass, and as the point ripped through the fabric and broke the skin, a thin rivulet of blood began to slide down the metal. It ran down its length and across Oropher’s hand, dripping from there slowly to the ground as neither of them moved, Maglor to try to escape or Oropher to apply the final burst of pressure. Slowly the frozen moment stretched into eternity. Then, against all logic, Oropher’s grip loosened, and the knife clattered to the ground, and the metal of the blade struck a stone and rang in muddy tones that showed far better than sight the imperfections in the metal.

It should have been possible for him to kill this elf, it should have been _easy_ , and yet he couldn’t. When he looked up he did not see the cursed son of Fëanor’s face, it was Thranduil’s, and when he turned Talathel’s, and Authdelu’s, and Túgun’s, and so many, many others. He didn’t even know all those who had died. Those he had killed, whose souls spread from his footsteps across the sea to Valinor. He was choking on death already.

Oropher pulled away from Maglor stiffly, as though he’d forgotten how his muscles and joints fit together. He didn’t try to retrieve the knife, he barely seemed to have noticed its loss. After a moment of standing still, face shadowed and painfully blank, he turned and began to move, clumsy at first, but gaining grace and speed again with every step until he was running, hard, up the beach and into the trees. Maglor stood unmoving with his back against the pine and watched him go.

Oropher had been gone for Maglor knew not how long by the time he raised a clumsy, ruined hand and pressed it down over his heart. He could feel the blood, slick and sticky and so much more familiar than it should be drying against his skin; the wound was already almost closed. When he pulled his hand away his fingers looked like they had been covered in rust. He stared at them for a very long time, and wondered as he did why he was still alive, until reality finally had a chance to sink in and he began to shake.

As the sun crept under the horizon he sank slowly to the ground, still staring at the blood coating his burned and twisted hand, and did not move until the moon rose as his thoughts chased each other down empty paths.

After all that had happened there were few things that Maglor knew better, or kept better company with, than regret. It was his long companion. He recognized its footsteps, and the glint that had been in Oropher’s eyes, the shadow trailing at his feet like a line of blood. Something had happened. 

_Everything that you and your family began._

The words, and their memory, tore another hole in him to bleed regret. He didn’t worry much about it, it would heal in time – such wounds always did – even if they always healed badly; his heart was criss-crossed with twisted, lumpy scars. They did not always trouble him: many were old, older than the sun and the moon, but sometimes under the cold light of the stars they ached almost as though still new. Such was life. Another scar surely wouldn’t make any great difference.

The little knife had glinted in the moonlight at his feet, silver and sanguine, until he carefully reached down and picked it up to clean it. The prospect was much more difficult than it sounded – the burns that the silmaril had inflicted had left him clumsy and awkward, and he very nearly cut himself trying to wipe the blood off. By the time he was done his fingers and the scrap of fabric he’d tried to use were stained red, and the knife still streaked with it; he’d done more to smear the blood than remove it properly. All he could think, as he looked down at it, was that there was something pathetically appropriate about that for a child of Fëanor. That, even at his best, this was the result.

It wasn’t a very good knife, nothing when compared to Noldor steel – the blade felt too brittle under his hands, not smooth enough, uneven in its sharpness. It was nothing at all like the lovely leaf-shaped knives his father had made, the ones that were embossed with songs and tales, the ones made of silver and gold with pearls in their hilts. He traced the little knife with his left hand, which had not been burned so badly as his right, for a few long moments before he lifted his head and stared out to sea. He tried as he did to remember the days when he had not been Maglor, only Makalaurë, and the way the stars had seemed to quiver in the branches of Telperion and fall like rain whenever the wind stirred his branches. The surf boomed and faded like the sound of breathing until he bowed his head and looked down from the horizon.

It was no use. There was still blood on his hands.

* * *

Maglor didn't move again for what might have been hours and might have been days; it was sometimes very easy to lose himself in the ocean, and sometimes he was content to be lost. When he finally came to himself again the blood on his skin and clothing was dry. It pulled his skin as he absently rearranged his grip on the knife, which was what brought him back to the present, away from memories of beaches of pearls sodden with blood and a queen crowned with stars and to the problem at hand. He still needed to decide what to do with the knife.

The rational thing would be to leave it where it was until Oropher returned for his weapon, or even to cast it into the sea so that it could not be used against him again. But if he took either of those options the metal would rust, and even this poor blade deserved better than that. Maglor considered it inanely for a few moments more before finally shifting to settle it in his own belt, to keep until such time as he could devise a better plan. He tried, as he climbed to his feet, not to imagine how his family would react to see him armed with such a weapon - of Celegorm’s scorn, and Caranthir’s disdain, Maedhros’s carefully polite disbelief and his father’s disgust, but it was hard not to when they were still so close to the front of his mind.

“I know,” he told the ghosts in the sea spray, “but I don’t want to leave it. Even it deserves better, and we’ve already caused damage enough.” The words rang in the silence, but he could still almost hear their answers in the crashing of the surf. “I sound mad,” he muttered to himself as he deliberately turned away again and stooped to pick up his old silver harp, slinging it into place once again as he straightened back up. Even keeping the knife was mad enough in his own way: he doubted very much he _would_ ever find a chance to see it returned to its owner. Surely Oropher did not plan to return to find an old enemy when he was now weaponless. But then, after all that had happened he surely had as good a claim to madness as any, and at least this time it would hurt no one else.

It was some days later that he was proven wrong.

“You have something of mine.” The words were harsh and blunt and belligerent and completely unexpected. Even after having heard them, Maglor hardly believed it when he turned and found Oropher, standing lightly with his head up, looking for all the world like a deer ready to take flight.

“You came back for it,” Maglor said, startled into stating the obvious.

“I’m not going to leave it with you. It doesn’t deserve that.”

Maglor’s temper flared slightly at the words, finally – it was still there, even after having been drowned by the waves and buried by the sand and ground into both by the endless press of years. Oropher didn’t know the first thing about the blades he’d handled, even made, those his family had crafted which had never been turned to ill end, and yet there he stood-

Of course he stood there with accusations and insults on his tongue. He had cause enough. And of _course_ he knew something of the blades his family had made, doubtless all he wanted to. Oropher’s family had been killed by them.

Maglor forced himself to swallow his temper down again; Oropher had come for the knife, so Maglor stood to give it to him. It was still at his waist, which was something he hadn’t thought anything of until he drew it to hand back and Oropher flinched all over, hard. The other elf didn’t _quite_ step away, but he did become even paler than he already was, and even more drawn, which considering the condition he was already in was surprising itself. He already looked haggard, half-dead for all his spirit. His eyes were bright as a bird’s.

It was strange, really, the extra things you started to notice when there wasn’t a knife at your heart.

There was something terribly and intimately familiar about his expression, though Maglor had no idea what it was. “Here,” he said, suddenly, with something that might have been pity and might have been compassion and might have been remorse, and stooped, moving slowly and gracefully, to set the blade on the sand, and then had stood to step back away from it, to separate himself from the weapon. Oropher stood still for a long moment before he moved to take it, hesitating, looking at Maglor, who looked back and wondered if Oropher was going to kill him, this time.

Instead he’d finally stepped forward, and had moved with a forced careless leisure to pick up the knife and wipe the sand off of the blade before sliding it away again, and then turning to look back at Maglor. He was still pale, but his expression was sharp and his eyes were fierce.

“I’m not here for your pity.”

“I never thought you were.”

Oropher stood watching for a few moments longer, then turned in a flash of almost white hair and slipped away once more, and Maglor was left once again with no idea how he should feel about any of it. It was pointless to wonder, so he forced himself to push it aside, or at least to try. He couldn’t lose himself so easily in the waves afterwards as he was accustomed, as he found when he tried to do so.

Oropher’s expression had been so familiar.

He needed to put it out of his head.

In the end it was his condition more than his expression that had lingered most in Maglor’s head; he could hardly help it. Oropher wasn’t a child, he was thousands of years old by now, he was an old enemy who had fought in old wars, but none of that mitigated the fact that Maglor had had five younger brothers (to say nothing of the cousins who had almost been family, before they had been betrayed), and many had been troublemakers. Maglor had always been one of the mildest of his brothers, and had long, long since become accustomed to taking care of the others, to following Maedhros like a shadow to catch anything he might miss when his older brother had swept from place to place, restoring some semblance of order to the places he visited. Maedhros was gone now, of course, he had been for millennia, and his loss had left Maglor a shadow with nothing to cast it, melted in the harsh light of day, but… Well, old habits died hard. And, child or not, old enemy or not, Oropher had been thin, and pale, and his eyes had been dark as the sea in storm, and so very _tired_.

He wasn’t taking care of himself, a voice that once upon a time in Valinor might have passed for Maedhros – Maitimo, he would have been at that point – had whispered in the back of his mind, and along with the memories of Oropher himself had made it so impossible to fade into the music of the waves that eventually Maglor had gone looking for Oropher just to shut his voices up. Maglor was not his brothers and had no great skill in tracking, so that task was more difficult than it might have been; he was privately convinced that when he’d finally stumbled across Oropher, almost literally, it had been a great deal more due to dumb luck than any skill of his.

He’d stood for several long minutes and studied him when he had found him – Oropher had been asleep, but had managed to look exhausted even through his dreaming. And he looked….

He’d found him, at least, maybe that would be enough to find some peace.

Maglor stepped closer as lightly as he could, so as not to wake him, and gently put two wizened apples from a tree a little inland on the ground near Oropher’s face. They were the last remnant of the past autumn’s harvest, small and wrinkled but very sweet. He’d been saving them for he knew not what – now as much as any time, he supposed. After all Oropher _was_ a wood-elf, or good as, and as far as he knew they enjoyed that sort of thing. Besides, he needed food. The apples weren’t much, but they were probably the best start he could give him – fish would be too obvious, and Oropher would just throw it back in his face if he knew who his benefactor was. The apples he might take.

Oropher looked unexpectedly fragile, lying half curled as he dreamed. Maglor stood still for a long moment, watching him, until he realized what he was doing, and took a step back.

The apples were a beginning, he told himself as he counted his footsteps back to the cliffs. The apples would help. It wasn’t as though Oropher hadn’t looked after himself for years. It wasn’t as though he needed to be worried.

The apples would help.

**Author's Note:**

> I have more planned but I don't know what the update schedule will be, but I'll try to get it out in a more or less timely manner.


End file.
